Bluefall's recent WWwA posts got me to thinking about one of my favorite and highly unappreciated couples. The best two Wondie supporting cast characters ever and I had to create both of their comicvine pages myself. It's a crying shame, that's what it is. But here I am, ready to educate the masses on the awesomeness of their relationship.

In a couple of other threads, we discussed the potential of a conflict between Wonder Woman and Poison Ivy. They're both mystically connected to the Earth Mother. That's an aspect of Diana that hasn't been touched on in a while, so we'll revisit a story from the classic Perez run.

Perez used the classic Greek myths heavily during his Wonder Woman run. One myth he used tied in so perfectly to Diana's origins one would think Marston had to have had it in mind when he created her, except... He never mentioned a connection to Pandora.

Like many classic mythological figures, Pandora's stories have a lot of contradictions as the myths were modified over time. The version we're most familiar with is the woman molded from clay, gifted by the gods, and sent to Earth with a box... Or was it a jar?

However, an earlier version of the Pandora myth had her a nature goddess ("Pandora" translates to "all-giving") who embodied the fertility of the Earth, the giver of fruits and grains.

So, which version of the myths, in this series, was the true one? The answer, in true Perez fashion: Both.

Dr. Psycho was introduced in the Golden Age, and quickly became one of Wonder Woman's main foes. When George Perez revamped WW following Crisis of Infinite Earths, it was natural that he'd bring back, and revamp, Dr. Psycho, as he'd done with the Cheetah, Ares, the Silver Swan, and Circe.

Perez didn't rush into it, though. Dr. Psycho was re-introduced towards the end of Perez's run. But, as this was, really, a five year epic story, Dr. Psycho entered the stage when it was time for him to play his role.

And, that role would be nightmarish. Literally. This would establish him as one of the most twisted and evil of DC's villains. But, what's truly important is how Diana responds, how she deals with this threat. It's often said that heroes are, in part, defined by their villains. The villain represents what the hero must overcome in their struggles, what makes them heroes. Also, Diana, as she often does during Perez's run, demonstrates that she has other ways of dealing with evil than simply beating it up.

We're just about done with Perez at this point - not that we've more than scratched the surface of his incredible run, but there's just so much more to see that we have to move on eventually (and I'll admit to a certain fatigue with the effort involved in making these older comics *work* as scans, as well). But we'll take one last dip in his world before we go, because no catalogue of Perez' great contributions to the Wonder Woman mythos would be complete without a look at the Bana-Mighdall amazons. This splinter group is probably the best example possible of Perez' ability to take what looks like a huge pile of bad cliches and uncomfortable racial undertones and spin a diverse, interesting set of real, well-drawn characters out of it. Yes, the plot that adds the Bana-Mighdall to the DCU is a convoluted one, difficult to follow at times and intertwined with some seriously confusing Cheetah stuff and some very poorly supported one-off bad guys. But, hey, that's Perez for you, and seriously, they're a lost tribe of amazons. That shit is cool.

From as far back as Marston, Wonder Woman's defining short phrase, her version of "Caped Crusader" or "Man of Steel" or "Scarlet Speedster," has been "Amazon Princess." Which is fair, because that's what she is in the most literal sense - the daughter of the amazon queen (well at least until they dissolved the monarchy, but at this point I think I'm going to have to admit I've lost that one) - but for most of her pre-Crisis history, was nevertheless a relatively empty phrase. Diana was a princess because girls like princesses, as any Disney exec can tell you, and that was it. Occasionally the authority was useful, but basically it was a purely meta thing that was merely convenient shorthand for her specialness.

Part of Perez' genius was to actually consider what being a princess means for Diana, especially from the mythical perspective of this very mythical character. Mythic royalty isn't about tiaras and castles, after all. It's about stewardship, struggle, king sacrifice; about servitude and symbiosis and taking your people's burdens for your own. Diana, as Athena's champion and essentially a demigod, is an avatar of the Olympians, yes - but as heir to the throne, she's also the avatar of the amazons, and that responsibility is as integral to her character as her duty to her gods. She bleeds when her people bleed, they win when she wins, their story is hers and hers theirs. And Perez' run was saturated with that understanding, in a constant intertwining of Diana's mission and the activities of the Amazon Nation as a whole. She's not just one of them, she's not even just the best of them; she is them, full stop. That concept underpins the particular awesomeness I've got on offer today - this is the story of Themyscira and how the Amazon Nation reconnected with Man's World. Because Diana did, and so that Diana could. And because it's a damn good story.

Next time: Perez attempts to pre-empt strawfeminist portrayals of the Themyscirans with some strawfeminists of his own for Diana to oppose. And because he is Perez, they end up completely fascinating anyway.

Last chapter we saw how Perez cleanly and deftly rebooted the Wonder Woman franchise, discarding all the old continuity, the weird bondage, the creepily gender-centric weaknesses, the sexist "ooh a May-un, I must follow him home!" and outdated "we must fight Nazis!" motivations for leaving Paradise, and her jingoistic 40s-style association with the American Way. One thing he did leave, however, was her costume. Because her costume is iconic. (I blame the TV show for this. And inertia. Two reboots now, at least five perfect story-based opportunities to get her into something sane, and it just never happens.)

This obviously presented a problem, seeing as the costume no longer made sense at all in Diana's new, completely American-free context. Perez attempted to cope with this conundrum by giving Diana's costume itself its own sort of backstory, which is what this chapter is concerned with. Because Perez being Perez, he didn't just write a story about the bathing suit; he wrote an intricate, moving epic that spans two generations, connects Steve and Diana on a personal level and Themyscira and Man's World on a historical one, and solidifies and reinforces one of the most fundamental traits of the very concept of "Wonder Woman."

Alright, both by request and because I myself feel something at a loss with it gone, here commences the repost of my When Wondy was Awesome series from our LJ incarnation.

We'll begin, as is proper, at the beginning - the origin of the character as she is now. The concept of Wonder Woman, of course, is one of the oldest in Big Two comics, as she was first created by Marston back in 1941. However, once the Golden Age ended and the character passed into other hands, she became something of an albatross to the company - they were under contract to keep publishing her, but they didn't really know what to do with her, and her title quickly devolved into a miserable sexist mess from which it never entirely recovered.

Thus, with Crisis on Infinite Earths, Editorial completely erased Wonder Woman from past continuity, deciding she would enter the DCU for the first time in the late 80s - allowing them to start over and try to really do her justice. After a long (and terrifying to read about for fear of what might have been) process, they finally found a team that they thought could both create a new and viable character, and preserve the essence of the one who came before; thus Diana passed into the hands of Greg Potter and the now-definitive George Perez.

Next time: The nonsensical American flag bathing suit is made to make some small sliver of sense, we learn what kind of person inspires an amazon and why we should care about Steve Trevor, and Diana kills a hecatoncheries, as we tackle the second, less prominent but no less awesome half of Wonder Woman's origin.

Extras

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